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The owner had left the 2010 Nissan Altima running, with the youngster inside, in front of the Goody II Chinese and Spanish restaurant on Union Avenue around 9 p.m. Monday, Public Safety Director Jerry Speziale said.
All available uniformed officers and detectives flooded the area in response to the call, Speziale said.
Twenty minutes later, Lt. Louis Pacelli spotted the sedan behind Public School #5, he said.
Seeing him, the teen driver hit the gas and took off on Kearny Street.
The underage thief turned the speeding sedan onto West Broadway, with Pacelli close behind, Speziale said.
He then failed to negotiate a turn onto White Street, where the Altima crashed into an unoccupied Dodge caravan, the director said.
The teen then threw the sedan into reverse, slamming it into a cruiser driven by Officer Mucio Lucero, Speziale said.
He got out, took off on foot and was tackled by Lucero, he said.
Other officers checked on the child, who Speziale said wasn’t injured but as taken to St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center as a precaution. He checked out OK, the director said.
Police, meanwhile, signed delinquency complaints against the juvenile for carjacking, criminal restraint, aggravated assault, eluding, resisting, theft and possession of a weapon – the vehicle.
They sent him to the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center in Newark pending a close-door hearing in the Family Part of Superior Court in Paterson.
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